FUTURE-ENABLING AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES
The chance finding of a news clip on TechTV led recently to a ride in an autonomous vehicle in a church car park in Auckland’s Pakuranga.
In the clip, entitled A NZ Mobility Innovation That Will Change the World, Mohammed Hikmet, executive chairman of HMI Technologies Ltd and president of Intelligent Transport Systems New Zealand from 2015 to 2017, was describing the data-driven ecosystem that he and his team at Ohmio Automotion Ltd have developed alongside their vehicle.
Winner of the New Zealand Trade and Enterprises–sponsored 2018 TIN Rocket Award as a technology exporter, HMI gathers real-time data from its network of road signs throughout New Zealand and Australia — through which its vehicle moves — and uses the data collected to create the ecosystem.
Direction is not set
Styled like a small bus, the Ohmio has no distinct front or back, due to its ability to move in either direction as required. Hartmut Beintken, Ohmio’s chief engineering and research officer, told me that potential buyers in Korea insisted that under Korean law there had to be a defining difference. The initial thought was simply to cover the headlights at one end, but this was not regarded as sufficient, so,
